NEW YORK (CBS 2) — A controversial urban poetry book will be sanitized before it is taught again in New York City public schools.

Parents were aghast when copies of the racy reading material – it makes sexually explicit comments about everyone from drug dealers to presidents – were given to fifth graders.

Tylibah Washington took to the streets of Canarsie on Friday to defend her book, “Streets in Poem Form.”

“The messages that I convey in these poems is that you can transcend – anything in life that you’re going to do, you’re capable of being able to do it,” Washington said.

Some parents at P.S. 279 in Canarsie took issue with the book, which Tylibah gave out at the end of a fifth grade poetry-in-motion class, because it contains some elements they think are not appropriate for such young kids.

“I’m not happy with the school system at all – because of their lapse in judgment,” parent Kathy McDonald said.

Some of the poems are about chasing dreams and include tributes to historical figures like Rosa Parks.

Also among the passages, though, is an anti-war poem that says President George W. Bush “loves war so much he gets an erection.”

Another – “Supa Dupa!” – contains a reference to a crack-addicted hooker performing sex acts, while still another talks positively about an addiction to painkillers.

Marcia Kramer joined CBS 2 in 1990 as an investigative and political reporter. Prior to CBS 2, she was the City Hall bureau chief at the New York Daily News.
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